


An Echo and A Warning

by MoominQuartz (IceCreAMS)



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [10]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Secrets, Serious Injuries, Steven Universe Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/MoominQuartz
Summary: Steven's empathic abilities get out of hand as he starts inheriting the physical pain of those around him.
Relationships: Amethyst & Garnet & Pearl & Steven Universe
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648339
Comments: 20
Kudos: 161
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	An Echo and A Warning

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt "Phantom Pain" + Steven in the Bad Things Happen Bingo. It's my first time writing something like this, so feel free to rip it to shreds!
> 
> If you're not caught up on SUF, just know that this contains spoilers through the episode "Prickly Pair."
> 
> I wasn't sure if this deserved the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" warning. It's definitely more graphic than the show gets, but to call it "Gore" would be a stretch. So keep that in mind as you read through it.

Steven hits Jasper as hard as he can, hands fisted together as he slams her head first into the ground with such intensity, she leaves a crater in her wake.

As he slowly lands, he feels his own head _pounding,_ arms aching, and he grimaces, but he bears it. He just pushed himself too hard, that’s fine. It was bound to happen with Jasper, even if he doesn’t exactly remember her tearing into his skull.

When everything spirals out of control with the Gem-Human Excellence Mentorship program, Steven feels his fingers freeze, so cold it _burns,_ as he watches Obsidian’s plane goes down. As a Ruby runs by, lighting fire with every step, his feet _singe,_ an odd smell coming up. At the end of all of it — as hectic as that day is — he looks down and sees his fingers are purple, realizes the bottom of his feet hurt like a real, physical _burn._ It’s all better with a kiss. And even though it’s weird, he doesn’t think to tell any of the others about it, because it’s a one time thing.

And then… the Reef.

“I don’t wanna hear about it — I don’t even wanna _think_ about it!”

“Steven.” Pearl’s voice is urgent, and he doesn’t hear it.

“I just — want — to _fix this!”_

The scream that tears through the facility almost deafens him, and it comes out of his own mouth. Volleyball cries out, cowering behind Pearl and holding the spot where her eye should be.

Pain explodes behind his left eye.

He doesn’t get a moment to think about it, even as he groans and clutches at his head as his pink glow fades; Shell activates and immediately begins rejuvenating the two Pearls in front of him, and he has more important priorities.

His depth perception shifts, it takes him longer to focus than it should. He grits his teeth and pushes through it.

When Pearl — Double Pearl — Royal Pearl? Mega Pearl? He’s not sure what to call this new fusion, who hasn’t introduced herself just yet. When she appears to him on the beach, her eye still cracked, he wonders if he did that.

She’s learned, it sounds like. That’s good.

Then she turns and looks at him as she finishes justifying her existence — and he’s happy for her, he is, even if he has to turn his head a little farther than he should to look at her — and she blinks. “Steven--”

Then her form dissipates, fusion coming undone. Steven starts, pushing his hand back behind him in order to stand, and the pain returns in his eye in a wave so intense, it nearly knocks him back again. He groans, holding his left eye as Pearl — _his_ Pearl, not Mom’s — comes to his side and holds his head between her hands.

“Let me see.”

“Pearl, it’s fine—”

_“Let me see.”_

Reluctantly, he lets go, his own hands dropping as he squints up at her. He can’t _fathom_ why he’s in such intense pain right now, but Pearl’s expression is one of horror. “Steven, your eye… it’s…”

“W-what?” His voice is ragged with exhaustion. “What is it?”

“Can you heal yourself? Do it. Do it now.”

He presses a kiss to his fingers and immediately, the pain fades, sighing out of him. But when he looks at Pearl again, there’s no difference in his vision. He blinks.

He takes a step back, pulling from Pearl’s grip, trying to right the _wrongness_ in his vision. It doesn’t work. One step more, then two.

“Steven…”

“What’s going on?” he whispers, horrified.

Pearl comes forward to grab his hand and take him to Garnet.

* * *

“I didn’t foresee this,” Garnet murmurs with concern in her voice.

 _Well, duh,_ he grumbles, keeping his grievances private. _If you had, you’d’ve said something._

“Wait, so… how did this even _happen?”_

“Steven, have you noticed your powers acting out in other ways?” Steven leverages Pearl a Look, and she huffs. “Besides your… pink glow, and the scream?”

He half-hesitates. But they’ve stumbled upon it already, and it’s at this point that he realizes everything else is… probably connected. So reluctantly, he mutters, “Uh… during the whole thing with you, Amethyst, I… kind of felt the freezing pain that Obsidian must’ve felt when the plan was going down, when her ice powers overrode the system.”

He decidedly does not mention that he saw Jasper recently and got into a fight with her, because that’s asking for trouble.

“Huh. I noticed something was up when we fused.” Amethyst shrugs. “I just thought you’d slept wrong, or something.”

Now that she says it, the pain _had_ lessened when they became Smoky Quartz. He doesn’t quite know what to think of that.

Neither do any of them.

“Perhaps you’d best stay in until we can figure out what’s going on.”

“What? Garnet, c’mon!” Her expression remains unmoved. “I can heal myself just fine! So I… can’t really fix my eye right now, but that’s fine! It’s fine. I’ll manage. What’s a little depth perception to a gem, huh?”

“You’re not only gem, dude. You’re half-human, too.” Amethyst sighs. “But like… yeah, I gotta admit, staying cooped up here sounds like hell.”

Garnet watches Steven for a long moment. Finally, she assents. “Very well. But you’re going to keep us up to date if anything odd like this happens again. Understood?”

“Understood.”

* * *

When he and Lapis visit another world to talk down two rogue Lapis Lazulis from destroying planets, things get out of hand very quickly. Lapis is thrown to the cliff wall, and chains wrap around her arms and her ankles, holding her in place.

Steven feels chains holding him down, too.

When it’s all over, it’s hardly anything, but there’s odd marking against where he’d felt the chains. Lapis, on the other hand, has no sign anything happened at all, except for her dour expression.

* * *

When he wields his shield like a weapon against Cactus Steven is when the fight takes an immediate downturn. The shield digs like a blade into the cactus, and Steven gasps, a hiccup, clutching at his own as he feels skin and tendon _rip._

Liquid pools against his hand, his shirt unbroken but sticking to his skin. The cut goes deeper into his side, though thinner as it reaches his abdomen, and he grits his teeth through a sudden sob of pain.

When the gems arrive, they all gasp as he opens the door to interrupt them. He can’t let them see him like this, but more importantly, he can’t let them _hear_ the things he’s been trying so, so desperately to repress.

“Steven, you’re _bleeding—”_

“Come back in let’s say a couple of hours okay bye!” And with that he’s back in the fight, favoring his right arm as his injured left hinders him.

Then no one listens — because of course not — Garnet summons her gauntlet and knocks the cactus’s arm off. It is, of course, the arm on the opposite side that Steven hit, and immediately there’s an explosion of pain where his shoulder connects to it.

The tip of Pearl’s spear digs into the flesh of the cactus, and Steven bites back a cry as he feels a sharp pain in the _same wound._ When the cactus sends her flying with her spear, he feels blood open.

_Is… is this what we’re doing to it?_

He can’t allow this to happen anymore.

The others are slammed into the wall and he feels the impact in the base of his spine. 

“I know what I have to do,” he declares.

Steven hugs the cactus, and all of its spines spear his flesh, dig into his open wounds, even into the skin of his eyelids. He grimaces and tries very, very hard not to cry.

The flower it bequeaths him is beautiful, but he feels it. In the same breath as it picks the flower from its form, a shot of pain rolls through him.

“Steven,” Pearl whispers as they watch the cactus destroy the front door. “How in the world did you get hurt so—”

He presses a kiss to his knuckles and a shimmer covers his form. He grits his teeth, shuddering, as he feels his wound close, fighting his pajama shirt that sticks to it. The spines are all pushed out, of both the wound and his skin, and they fall to the floor with hardly a sound.

“I’m still getting used to this depth perception thing, I guess. It’s fine.”

Garnet frowns. “This doesn’t have anything to do with—”

“Nah, I just slipped up a bit in that fight. I’ll be all right.”

His shoulder pulses, an echo and a warning.


End file.
